⫸STICKY⫷ Books - Authors & Books Discussion

[blahblahblah]

Not problem not-a-unique-snowflake, glad you liked it...

 

[Jert]

I'll second that. "Neverwhere" is one of my all-time favourite books.

Cool. I just bought 'neverwhere' -- I look forward to reading it. Right now I'm reading "Against a Dark Background" by Iain Banks. I'll have to check out the "Bridge."

I'd like to recommend Philip K Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It is defintely a weird book. It's like a hit of acid, in handy dandy book format.

 

[smart-e]

Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction
By Luke Davies. Published as a paperback original in this country by Ballantine in 1998, this is a doper novel set in Australia in the late 80s-early 90s. I know Davies and this is mostly autobiographical stuff and very well written. Lots of details of ripping and running Aussie style, including cooking up heroin "home bake" from OTC codeine pills. Fascinating. Very Very GOOD

This is an awesome book.

 

[dr seuss]

Perfume by PATRICK SUSKIND

thirded! superb. his other work, 'the pigeon', is definitely weird but a completely different undertaking - stark minimalist existentialism, really.

i thoroughly recommend:

albert camus - almost anything, particularly 'exile and the kingdom
milan kundera - almost anything, but especially 'the unbearable lightness of being' and 'immortality'
william goldman - 'the princess bride' (trust me!)
jean cocteau - 'opium'
john wyndham - 'the day of the triffids', 'the midwich cuckoos'
ben okri - 'the famished road'

 

[colicolo]

This thread is purely for the discussion of books, authors and related topics.

I recently merged the "Good Weird Books" thread here...

Many thanks to all those who regularly contribute

 

[fasteddie]

Not a whole lot

I'm up to my eyeballs in HTML coding and bio-diesel shit.

But, I'll discuss my other two intellectual mentors: Henry David Thoreau, and Abbie Hoffman.

Once upon a time, I was a Junior HS geek. Yeah, smart, but that never got anyone a date. I was taking one of of those 'fill in the right oval with a #2 pencil' tests, and, as usual. I finished it before everyone else. I'm bored...I'm looking around...there's this book somebody left there.

"Walden; or, Life in the Woods"

I stole it.

I read this book, and, RESONANCE. Here's a fucking socially rejected geek, like me, from the 19th century. So many things I felt, thought...echoed.

Now, I'm not alone. I'm part of an American tradition...those who Will Not Go Along To Get Along. It gave me hope, and strength. I did not kill myself.

Then, a few years later, I pick up this book called "Steal This Book." I still haven't gotten laid, I'm still a fucking geek, but I get from this: you don't have to be like the others. Life is not like the fucking Boy Scouts, where your lot in life is determined by what social Merit Badges you've earned. Life is FREE form. it's what you can TAKE; it's what you make of it. FUCK the powers that be...

Sorry. I've gotten into the Budweiser again. But, in a very real sense, these writers were my salvation.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I always love a read that tauts if not celebrates the underdog or the underground. To often we are forced into a homogeny that we did not ask but our parents generation invited with open arms to cure the woes that westernization may or may not have caused. I love reading things about sociatal hacking, memetic engneering. Basically future speak in modern terms. I will have to check out the books that you spoke about.

Currently i am readig some orson scott card light reading. But i just finished a great book about queer gnosism. It was called jesus and the tradition of same sex love. I liked it for its subversive take or alternative history of a religion that is all pervasive here in america.

 

[fasteddie]

Currently i am readig some orson scott card light reading. But i just finished a great book about queer gnosism. It was called jesus and the tradition of same sex love. I liked it for its subversive take or alternative history of a religion that is all pervasive here in america.

I read a story by him once in Omni magazine, called "A Thousand Deaths."

Interestingly, Card is a practicing, and tithing, Mormon.

 

[wastedwalrus]

I'm reading "The Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maugham. It's really uneventful as far as action or plot goes, but Maugham is a genius in the way he describes the details and progression of his characters. That alone is just as enthralling as physical action.

It's about the author's observations after WWI, during the depression, and I believe during WWII of a group of people he comes to call his friends. The real protagonist is a kid who comes back from WWI and, after seeing his best friend die, chooses the path of knowledge and "loafing" over business and financial success. He turns out to live a much more fulfilling life than his money-oriented counterparts. The characters are from Europe and the States.

So far it's good.

fasteddie... I've always been interested in reading that book but I've never been sure if it would interest me to finish the entire thing. Is it very intriguing?

 

[fasteddie]

fasteddie... I've always been interested in reading that book but I've never been sure if it would interest me to finish the entire thing. Is it very intriguing?

I assume you mean "Walden."

It was one of the first "great books" I ever read. It's on the long side...I've heard it described as dull.

Try portions of it...the first chapter, "Economy" is pretty easy going. He makes a list of how much he paid for everything...there's a note next to one of the items saying "That was high."

Old Yankee skinflint.

He would have been horrified at the hippie subculture...he was a very abstaining person...didn't even use coffee or tea. And, he may very well never have had sex. There's a theory he was gay.

There's the fungus called Phallus Impudicus that is a dead ringer appearance wise for a human dick. He found one of these things, got really outraged...at whom, I'm not sure. He also made a drawing of it in his journal that was so detailed that the early publishers (he was not "discovered" until the 1920'S) had to suppress it!

 

[wastedwalrus]

Cool, thanks for the details. Hopefully I can work that in this summer (I have a stack of books I want to get through).

 

[Jabberwocky]

I read a story by him once in Omni magazine, called "A Thousand Deaths."

Interestingly, Card is a practicing, and tithing, Mormon.

I know. Check out his endor series. It was beautifully written. The first book deals with the idea philosophically of what alien life can be ramon veralese, good or bad yadda yadda. The second book is titled speaker for the dead, which is the real meat of the series in which he inserts ideologies about where souls come from and the interconnectivity or all creatures both man made and alien alike. brilliant.

 

[fasteddie]

Cool, thanks for the details. Hopefully I can work that in this summer (I have a stack of books I want to get through).

"Steal This Book" is worthwhile, too.

I still remember this picture in it...a shirtless Hoffman, outside the movie theater, with the caption: FUCK! I forgot my shirt!

 

[katmeow]

I'm reading Ben Elton - Inconceivable at the moment. Needed something light before tackling a book on climate change that's sitting on the shelf.

I've liked all the books of his that I've read, but I'm finding it very hard to relate in any way to the main female character in this book and her overwhelming desire to have children.

 

[colicolo]

I once read a book, but I can not remember the tittle.

It was a short Australian novel told in first person about a boy who is blind, although it never clearly states that he is blind. It was a great book, has anyone else ever heard of it. The biy gets shot and his dog dies as well....

Col

 

[Mind-Melt]

i want to read the new chuck palahniuk book. he is awesome. he is legend.

 

[wastedwalrus]

Alright so yesterday I stormed the poetry section of Barnes & Noble. I've been having an awful time with writer's block and I thought reading some more of the poets who have always inspired me would help. Frantically, I tore up the shelves. I bought "The Book of Images" by Rainer Maria Rilke, a compilation of poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (if you haven't read "Crossing The Bar", you don't know what real poetry is), "A Poet To His Beloved" by W.B. Yeats, "The Love Poems of John Keats, and a compilation of poems by William Wordsworth (again... if you've never read "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge", you've been had). I have my reading set out for me... I'm also about to start "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" by Stephen King.

 

[fasteddie]

"Composed Upon Westminster Bridge", you've been had).

"and all that mighty heart is lying still!"

No shit, amigo.


I was once chatting with somebody about Emily Dickinson on line, and I commented that she "compressed meaning" better than any other writer.

This fellow took it as a "lit crit" cliche...perhaps it is. But, I'm a fucking CHEMIST, I don't know SHIT about what I'm supposed to say. But, I do know what's GOOD.

"Exhaltation is the going,
of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses, past the headlands,
into deep Eternity.

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand,
The Divine Intoxication
Of the first league out from land?"

Rock 'n roll, plus sales tax, miss Em.


Ample make THIS BED!

Make this BED WITH AWE!

In it wait till Judgement break, EXCELLENT AND FAIR!

Be its mattress straight

Its pillow round,

Let no sunrises yellow noise,

Interrupt this ground.

(Exclamation points and capitalization added)

Rest well, all our well loved shades, those who've gone...where we're all headed.

 

[wastedwalrus]

Well played, sir. Well played

 

[fasteddie]

I once read a book, but I can not remember the tittle.

It was a short Australian novel told in first person about a boy who is blind, although it never clearly states that he is blind. It was a great book, has anyone else ever heard of it. The biy gets shot and his dog dies as well....

Col

I don't have the book anymore (The Fatal Shore, by R. Hughes) but he talks about an Aussie writer, kind of like our Bret Harte, whose stories revolve around the theme of "mateship."

What's that guy's name, somebody?